Voice of the DBA

Tag: windows

  • Moving Windows in Windows 7

    I had my laptop connected to a projector recently, and for some reason a few windows got moved off screen, like Twhirl. That was strange, so I did what I have done in the past and right clicked the icon. However that got me this:

    twhirl;

    I was expecting something more like this:

    twhirl2

    How did I get that? First I googled and found this link from Ask Leo. He explains the same issue I had and notes that I Windows 7 you have to hold down SHIFT and then right click.

    Sure enough, that works and you can select “Move”. From there I use the arrow keys to move things back on screen for me.

  • No More Drive Extender – Windows Home Server

    I guess I might need to go back to RAID. From the Windows Team Blog, there is a decision to remove Drive Extender from the next version of Windows Home Server. Based on the comments, I’m not alone in thinking this is a stupid move.

    The big challenge for me was automatically protecting the data on my various computers. Windows Home Server gave me an easy way to copy the data, and also have it on multiple drives, so it was safe in the event of a drive failure. I have heard that the larger 1TB and 2TB drives are more likely to have corruption as well, so there’s more of an issue here.

    Putting RAID together for small systems is a hassle, though perhaps R1 isn’t a big deal if you have 2TB drives. In any case, I’ll be thinking about whether I need to stick with WHS in the future or migrate to some other solution.

  • Cloning Virtual Box Images in Windows 7

    I use VirtualBox from Sun to do SQL testing since it supports 64-bit guest images, which I want need for some things, like Windows 2008 R2, which only comes in x64.

    However I hate reinstalling stuff that I don’t need to. And with a multitude of SQL versions, and a question today on eval edition (which I never install), I wanted to be sure I could quickly setup a new image when needed. In older VM software, I’ve just copied a VHD disk image and then added a new VM with it. However it’s not as simple with Virtual Box.

    I found a nice procedure from Stuart’s Notes on cloning and copying images, so I started there, but found a few differences on my machine, so here’s what I did.

    Found my Virtual Box files, which are located at: C:\Users\Steve\.VirtualBox\HardDisks (note, this is different than Stuart’s procedure. This is where things were installed on my Windows 7 x64 machine. I don’t have a “VDI” folder.

    In Windows, you can right click this in the Explorer and get the path. I then pasted that with a “CD” in front of it in a command prompt.

    VirtualBox1

    Next I grabbed the path to the Virtual Box installation, since I need to run the “vboxmanage.exe” program. For me, the path was “C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox”

    VirtualBox2  At this point, I essentially needed to run

    vboxmanage clonevdi  “Old Disk" "new disk"

    That, however, doesn’t really work easily in Windows. Instead, you need pathing, quotes, and other things to ensure that you get a copy. I had to run this:

    C:\Users\Steve\.VirtualBox\HardDisks>"C:\Program Files\Sun\VirtualBox\vboxmanage
    " clonevdi  "Win7 64.vdi" "Win7 SQL 2K.vdi"

    This completed, with these results:

    VirtualBox7

    From there, I fired  up Virtual Box, and created a new machine. I named it picked the old OS, and then got to the Virtual Disk dialog:

    VirtualBox3

    I clicked the button that has the arrow in the image. This brings up the disk selection dialog. I clicked “Add”

    VirtualBox4

    From there, the next step was to select my new disk image:

    VirtualBox5

    I picked it, then closed the dialog and I saw this image listed for my VM.

    VirtualBox6

    Complete the wizard, click start, and I had a clone of my virtual machine, same state, guest additions installed, and same pwd. I changed the background for my guest and then installed the software I needed on this one.

  • Connectify

    It’s a wired world. You’d think by this point, most major hotels, at least those costing upwards of $100/night, would have good wired, or wireless connections for their guests. I’d like it to be free, but I’d settle for good quality.
    However I hate the way that most hotels manage connectivity. It’s not by the connection, or room, but often by the MAC. So that people with one device are fine, but those of us that are techies, with more than one device, can’t connect them all. At least not cheaply.
    connectify[1]
    I usually carry two laptops, a iPhone, and sometimes my wife’s got a laptop and phone as well. I’ve debated carrying a router and using that, but it’s one more thing to carry. Instead I decided to try Connectify.
    It’s a wireless hotspot that runs on Windows 7 and allows your laptop to share it’s connection. You install it, no reboot needed, and then you create a hotspot name and password.
    That’s it.
    Once it’s up and running, in a few minutes, your other devices can connect to your personal hotspot. You have a local LAN and you can easily share files and access the Internet from all your devices.
    A very cool tool. I have it on both of my Win7 laptops to run hotspots, separate names, so whichever one is connected can be my router and allow me high speed access for all my devices on one connection.
    If my Internet connection works in the hotel.